How to Make a Picture Frame (Beginner Guide)

How to make a picture frame with a mitre box, a story stick and a tape clamp, plus an honest butt-joint alternative if precise mitres beat you.

What you're making

A picture frame, made from four lengths of timber with mitred corners, holding glass, a photo or print, and a backing board. It is the last of the small indoor builds on the projects hub and it is deliberately placed near the end.

Here is the honest version, before you buy anything: precise mitres are the hardest thing on this site for a beginner. A frame has eight angled cuts, every one of them has to be right, and the errors do not cancel out. They collect and arrive together in the final corner as a gap you cannot unsee. Nothing about a frame is heavy or dangerous or expensive. It is simply unforgiving, and that is a different kind of difficulty from anything in the earlier projects.

The easier alternative, offered up front

If mitres go badly, or you would rather not fight them at all, there is a frame style that uses only square cuts and looks like a decision rather than a retreat.

Let the two vertical pieces run the full height of the frame, and fit the two horizontal pieces between them. The end grain of the horizontals is hidden and the verticals read as clean uprights. Or go further: let all four pieces run long so they cross and project past the corners, the way a rustic or craftsman frame does. Both are established looks. Neither is a failed mitre. If you use a contrasting wood, or chamfer the projecting ends, it reads as entirely deliberate.

Everything else in this guide, including the rebate, the story stick, the glue-up and the fitting, applies to the square-cut version too.

What it costs and how long

An afternoon of cutting and fitting, then glue drying time before you fit the picture. Rushing the fitting is how people crack glass.

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The timber is cheap: a length of 1x2 pine is enough for a small frame. Glass and backing are the variable, and they depend on the size you choose and on your local glazier or framing shop. Standard photo and print sizes cost far less than custom sizes, so pick a standard size if you can. If you own no saw yet, a hand saw and mitre box is the tool this project genuinely depends on, and it is the same kit used by every other build on this site.

Cut list

Work these lengths out from your glass, not from a plan. A 1x2 is nominal; the board is about 19 mm thick and 38 mm wide (3/4 in by 1 1/2 in), and stock names and sizes vary by country, so measure what you buy.

Call the glass size G. Then:

• Rebate opening = G plus about 2 mm each way, so the glass drops in without being forced.
• Visible opening at the front = rebate opening minus twice the rebate width.
• Short-edge length of each mitred piece = the matching visible opening dimension.

Rebated picture frame moulding already has the step cut into it and skips the plywood strips entirely. If you can buy it, do. Measure its rebate directly rather than calculating one.

Before you start

Clamp the mitre box down to a solid surface. A mitre box that shifts by a degree gives you a cut that is out by a degree, and this is the one project where that shows.

Safety for this build:

• Eye protection for every cut and every sanding pass.
• Clamp the work. Short offcuts are the pieces people hold with their fingers, and short offcuts are exactly what this project produces.
• Wear a fine-particle dust mask if you sand for any length of time.
• Handling glass is the one place gloves make sense. Keep gloves well away from any rotating cutter, where they are a hazard rather than a help.
• Read and follow the label on the glue and any finish.

Stop and ask for help if you need glass cut. Have it done by a glazier or a framing shop, buy acrylic cut to size, or take the glass and backing from an inexpensive ready-made frame in a standard size. Cutting glass is a skill with a real injury risk attached and it is not worth learning by yourself for one frame. The wider rules are set out in the beginner safety guide.

Building the frame

Step 1: Make a story stick

Take a scrap of straight timber longer than your longest frame piece. Mark the visible opening width on it, and the visible opening height, clearly labelled. That scrap is now your story stick, and it replaces the tape measure for the rest of the build.

Marking every piece from one physical stick instead of re-reading a tape four times removes the biggest source of error in the whole project. Tapes get read a millimetre out, hooks bend, and the number in your head drifts. A pencil mark transferred from a stick does not. The measuring and marking guide covers the same principle for other builds.

Step 2: Cut the mitres

Cut one end of a piece at 45 degrees. Transfer the story stick mark so it lands on the short edge of the piece, the inside edge of the frame, then cut the second mitre in the opposite direction. Getting the mitres running opposite ways is the classic mistake; look at the piece and picture it in the frame before every cut.

Cut the second piece of that pair immediately, using the first as the pattern. Pairs that match each other matter more than pairs that match a number.

What right looks like: the cut face is flat, the angle is consistent, and the two pieces of a pair are indistinguishable when stacked.

Step 3: Fit the corners

Hold two pieces together and look at the joint against the light. If it gapes at the inside or the outside, the angle is slightly off.

Fix it with a sanding board: tape 120 grit sandpaper flat onto a scrap of plywood, then rub the mitre face on it with the piece held square. This shaves the joint in tiny amounts and keeps the face flat, which sanding by hand does not. Work on one face at a time and keep checking. This is slow and it is the step that decides how the frame looks.

Step 4: Glue and clamp

Lay all four pieces face down in a row, mitres touching, in the order they go around the frame. Run a strip of masking tape tightly across each of the three joints between them. Now turn the row over, put glue on every mitre face, roll the row up into a frame, and tape the fourth corner.

That tape clamp pulls all four joints closed at once and is enough for a frame this size. A band clamp does the same job more evenly if you have one. Check the frame is square by measuring both diagonals and adjusting until they match, then leave it flat on a level surface until the glue has fully set. Wipe any squeeze-out off with a damp cloth while it is wet, because dried glue seals the wood and shows as a pale patch under any finish.

Mitres are end-grain joints and end grain drinks glue, so a light first coat, a minute's wait, then a proper coat gives a better result. If you want more strength, a small nail through each corner, or a slot cut across the corner with a saw and filled with a thin wood spline, both work.

Step 5: Add the rebate and fit the picture

If you are making your own rebate, glue the four plywood strips to the back of the frame, flush with the outer edges, so they leave an even step all the way round.

Sand and finish the frame before anything goes in it. Then lay the glass in, the picture, then the backing board, and hold the stack in with frame points, turn buttons or small tacks. Add the hanger. Do not force anything: if the glass will not drop in, take material off the rebate rather than pushing on the glass.

Where beginners go wrong

Building the frame first and hunting for glass afterwards. Custom glass costs more and takes longer. Get the glass, then build to it.

Re-measuring each piece with a tape. Four separate readings means four chances to be a millimetre out. Use a story stick.

Cutting both ends of a piece the same way. You get a parallelogram, not a frame. Look at the piece each time.

Trusting the mitre box without testing it. Cut two scraps, put them together, and check the corner with a square before you cut anything you care about. Shim the box if it is off.

Forcing the glass into a tight rebate. Glass does not compress. Take material off the wood.

Finishing it

Sand through 120, 180 and 220 grit before assembly, when you can still lay each face flat, and soften the outer edges so the frame is comfortable to handle. Sand the visible opening edges carefully; they are what the eye follows.

For finish, a wipe-on oil or wipe-on polyurethane is easiest to apply without runs, and paint suits softwood frames well because pine takes stain unevenly. Follow the maker's directions on the container for coats and drying rather than any general rule. Rags used with oil finishes can heat up on their own and catch fire, so spread them flat outdoors to dry or dispose of them exactly as the label says. The sanding and finishing guide covers the choices, and the materials guide explains which timbers take a finish well.

Make it yours

Use a deeper moulding for a shadow box. More rebate depth turns the frame into a case for a medal, a badge or a pressed flower.

Float a print. Mount the print on a backing board smaller than the glass so it appears to sit inside the frame rather than under it.

Make a set. Three frames in the same timber and finish, at different sizes, look far better on a wall than one, and by the third one your mitres will be visibly better.

What to build next

Next is a floating wall shelf, which swaps precision cutting for a different skill: drilling accurately and fixing into a wall. The free First 5 Projects Roadmap sets out the five core builds in order if you want to see where this fits, and the hand tools guide covers what is worth owning by the time you are cutting mitres.